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Free event: Hear how social media is helping grow brands at #GrowSocial

Over the past ten years or so since the huge rise of Facebook, it seems that every week there’s a new social media platform springing up. Ostensibly designed as new ways to keep people in touch, it isn’t long before clever companies twig on to the value of these platforms as tools to promote themselves and help grow their brand.

Facebook and Twitter have offered businesses sponsored content options for a while, and the Facebook-owned Instagram also started allowing paid advertising in the UK in September 2014. These options let businesses push their post more prominently into users’ timelines, regardless of whether the user is a ‘friend’, ‘follower’ or ‘likes’ the business’s page, allowing them to target new customers and demographics.

While these are great for promoting your business and any special offers you’re currently running, and can be really effective, some brands are taking their social campaigns a bit further than a ‘2 for 1′ or ‘10% off’ code, leveraging social media in more innovative ways to engage potential customers more personally, create a buzz around products and increase the impact of PR stunts.

Innovative brand social campaigns

One brand that’s really made an impact recently is Cadbury, specifically with their Creme Egg. After a recent recipe change to the product, statistics showed there was a £6million slump in sales of their ovoid confection. So in January 2016, Cadbury decided to try to reengage customers and reverse the product’s fortunes by opening a pop-up Creme de la Creme Egg Cafe, on Greek Street in Soho, selling nothing but calorific Creme Egg-based treats (toatsties, tray bakes etc). To promote the pop-up, they took to social media, using Facebook to take reservations for their limited-opening cafe, with a snappy hashtag #CremeEggCafe used across Twitter and an Instagram-friendly aesthetic all creating a sweet, joined-up social campaign.

Iconic fashion house Burberry also turned heads in 2015 with an inspired campaign on Snapchat. Using the picture and video sharing service, they leaked their entire spring and summer line a day before the London Fashion Week launch, with the hashtag #LFW, which gave Snapchat users a look at the range before anyone else (Snapchat messages automatically erase after ten seconds, really adding to that sense of exclusivity).

The winner of the Webby Award 2015 for Social Media Campaigns also leveraged Snapchat. The Worldwide Fund for Nature wanted to raise awareness and increase donations to protect endangered animals, and used the platform and the popularity of the ‘selfie’ picture to create an innovative social campaign – #LastSelfie. They explained: “Creative utilisation of the emerging Snapchat mobile social platform, using native “timed message” functionality to highlight that time is running out for endangered species, while engaging millennials with the selfies phenomenon was the key to our campaign.”

Free #GrowSocial event in Soho

These are just a few examples of companies using social media to grow their brand and reach audiences, but we’re always seeing new campaigns on new platforms that continue to innovate and engage. So for our next Digital Creatives event, #GrowSocial (let’s get it trending…), we’re going to be focusing on using digital media to grow brands, with a whole host of VIP speakers talking about how they’re using social media, mobile marketing and apps to get their branding across to new audiences. To sign up, fill in the form on our events page.

On the day, we’ll be hearing from Adam Stamper, founder and CEO of social curation platform Hashtag’d, about some of the successful social campaigns they’ve been running with agencies. He said: “At Hashtag’d we’ve worked with agencies big and small who are putting social to work, sourcing fresh content from their audiences and fostering true engagement that spans both the web and the real world. Social media has been both hero and villain to marketers over the last few years; we’re looking forward to talking a bit more about what we’ve seen work and some of the best brands are winning with social as part of multi-platform, multi-touchpoint marketing campaigns.”